[9front] 9front Successfully Installed; USB Weirdness

["Jay F. Shachter" <jay@m5.chicago.il.us>]

Esteemed Colleagues:

I have successfully re-installed 9front, and it boots.  In a few
paragraphs, I will speculate why the previous installations (with only
one exception), did not complete.

Prior to the re-installation, I destroyed the 5-Gigabyte slice of disk
onto which 9front had been previously installed, and recreated it with
a size of 20 Gigabytes.  I also had to zero out the beginning of the
slice, because until I did that, the 9front installation program
skipped the repartitioning phase.

I am now able to boot into a working 9front system, except for some
USB weirdness that I shall describe in a moment.  So it seems that the
first time I installed 9front, the 5-Gigabyte slice of disk was not
large enough to contain it (which surprises me), but the installation
program did not detect, and report, that the slice of disk was not
large enough to contain the system that was being installed onto it
(which also surprises me).

Now, as for why so many of my other installation attempts failed, I
have a theory.  I have not thoroughly investigated whether the theory
is true, because life is too short to thoroughly investigate
everything in the world that puzzles you, but maybe it will interest
you.  I have a USB keyboard, which itself has 2 USB ports on it.  I
normally stick my USB mouse into one of those ports, and then I stick
the keyboard into whatever computer I am currently working with.  I
think the successful installation, among all the unsuccessful attempts,
took place when my USB keyboard was not stuck in to the computer onto
which I was install 9front, but, rather, into another computer, where
I was scrolling thru https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4184409/how-to-install-9front-a-plan-9-fork.
When I attempted to install 9front when the USB keyboard was not
connected to the computer, then the installation worked.  I know this
explanation sounds preposterous, but it is the only theory, as of this
moment, that I have.

Now for some additional, thoroughly perplexing, complexity.  I have
two operating systems on my computer that can generate GRUB menus: a
Linux system, and a Solaris system.  The Linux GRUB menu is installed
onto (if I may use the Linux terminology) /dev/sda and /dev/sda10; the
Solaris GRUB menu is installed onto /dev/sda13.  Each GRUB menu has a
menuitem that invokes the other one.  Thus:

     menuitem 'Solaris GRUB Menu' {
        set root=(hd0,13)
        chainloader +1
     }

and

     menuitem 'Linux GRUB Menu' {
        set root=(hd0,10)
        chainloader +1
     }

This is necessary to be able to access all the operating systems on
the computer, because the Linux GRUB menu cannot boot Solaris (or it
can but I haven't figured out how), and the Solaris GRUB menu cannot
boot OpenBSD (Solaris has a bad version of relocator.mod, the bug was
reported and fixed years ago, but Oracle has never upgraded its GRUB).

Now for the USB weirdness.  Each of these two GRUB menus has been
furnished with the following menuitem:

     menuitem '9front' {
        set root=(hd0,14)
        chainloader +1
     }

When I boot 9front from the Linux menu, I cannot use the USB
keyboard.  I can use the USB mouse only if I take it out of the
keyboard port and stick it in directly to the computer.  But when I
boot 9front from the Solaris menu, I can use both the USB keyboard,
and the USB mouse when it is connected to the USB keyboard.  This is
completely bewildering.  Apparently something is happening in the
Solaris GRUB menu that renders the USB keyboard visible to the 9front
system.  I have no idea what.  If anyone reading this has any notion
why 9front is unable to see the USB keyboard when it is booted one
way, but is able to see the USB keyboard when it is booted another
way, I would welcome hearing it.

	Jay F. Shachter
	6424 North Whipple Street
	Chicago IL  60645-4111
		(1-773)7613784   landline
		(1-410)9964737   GoogleVoice
                http://m5.chicago.il.us
		jay@m5.chicago.il.us

	"But when she traced the killer's IP address ... it was in the 192.168/16 block!"